Having more personal choice of news sources has some interesting impacts. It becomes more difficult for the media, as an agent, to inject its own rhetoric and politics; to be the agenda setter on a large scale. It may also start to quite the constantly beating drum of pessimism, murder, and mayhem. Putting this content on repeat apparently sells ads, but I believe it has a negative impact on the average person who watches it every day. If a person can select to receive information from optimists it may color his outlook to be more optimistic. But he may also, perhaps unintentionally, suppress information that comes from sources with views other than his own, thereby reducing his ability to see the whole picture and empathize with contrary points of view.
Don
· 10 months ago
You say there are "at least two." What is the second main kind of information in the “expressed” web?
gerry campbell
· 10 months ago
aha. it isn't perfectly clear.
The first is expression of thought or emotion - more personal communication. e.g. "want to go get coffee @bob?" or "@bob, I love radiohead's first release"
The second is the expression of information - or news. "The coffee shop at x and y streets is on fire. @bob and I going somewhere else" or "I just ate a burger from burgerworld and got food poisoning"
The best way I know to determine how definite the line is between the two types is to study query logs and resulting clicks. Not readily available data. That's why I am left in the world of hypothesis for the moment.
I have posited that the 2 other types of possible messages are transactional and of entertainment value. Looking to validate...
TomHaney
· 10 months ago
I see a lot of expressions of endorsement, which amplify the original expression of someone else -- retweet, I like this, check out this link, etc. It can have the effect of your friends sensing what's on the network and aggregating content for you.
gerry campbell
· 10 months ago
Good point. Worth understanding... there are expressions of status, the wish to be associated with the source...
markjosephson
· 10 months ago
Gerry, dead on about the massive increase in publishers (I wont call them jackass). There will always be a need for some editorial voice to at least curate the infinite stories and help bring the best and most important to the surface. IMO, the new media companies that will be successful will be super thin editorial curation atop big aggregated and organized data sets.
now, if only someone could deliver that model...
Rocky
· 9 months ago
Gerry,
Was thinking about a couple of similar examples. Got food poisoning at a restaurant a couple of weeks ago. Reported that on my social networks. With enough such reports, you could much more efficiently identify bad restaurants or public health issues.
Likewise, AT&T could use reports from iPhone users to fix their godawful 3G network. Heck, you could automatically upload packets that say "tried 3G, got EDGE" at this location.
You could then focus network buildout on where people are actually trying to use the service and failing.
What is going to be really interesting is when sites realize the power of these networks to collect data for them and do it in a meaningful way.
Think about all the problems we ran into with local search at AOL. InfoUSA's local business database, despite being the gold standard, leaves much to be desired.
Embedded GPS in more devices is also going to be a huge driver.
Rocky
· 9 months ago
@markjosephson I don't know that there is a need for an editorial voice in the traditional sense. I turned on CNN the other day and on their prime newscast, the lead stories were AG's comments on race, the chimpanzee cartoon and Octomom. All stuff I couldn't care less about. Instead of the top down "editorial voice" of MSM outlets, my new filter is my friend network.
I find out about most news -- whether it's news with a capital "N" or lowercase "n" from Twitter or Facebook. I've found the hit rate in terms of relevance is much higher than the front page of any news site.
All Comments
The first is expression of thought or emotion - more personal communication. e.g. "want to go get coffee @bob?" or "@bob, I love radiohead's first release"
The second is the expression of information - or news. "The coffee shop at x and y streets is on fire. @bob and I going somewhere else" or "I just ate a burger from burgerworld and got food poisoning"
The best way I know to determine how definite the line is between the two types is to study query logs and resulting clicks. Not readily available data. That's why I am left in the world of hypothesis for the moment.
I have posited that the 2 other types of possible messages are transactional and of entertainment value. Looking to validate...
now, if only someone could deliver that model...
Was thinking about a couple of similar examples. Got food poisoning at a restaurant a couple of weeks ago. Reported that on my social networks. With enough such reports, you could much more efficiently identify bad restaurants or public health issues.
Likewise, AT&T could use reports from iPhone users to fix their godawful 3G network. Heck, you could automatically upload packets that say "tried 3G, got EDGE" at this location.
You could then focus network buildout on where people are actually trying to use the service and failing.
What is going to be really interesting is when sites realize the power of these networks to collect data for them and do it in a meaningful way.
Think about all the problems we ran into with local search at AOL. InfoUSA's local business database, despite being the gold standard, leaves much to be desired.
Embedded GPS in more devices is also going to be a huge driver.
I find out about most news -- whether it's news with a capital "N" or lowercase "n" from Twitter or Facebook. I've found the hit rate in terms of relevance is much higher than the front page of any news site.
See my blog post:
http://blog.agrawals.org/2008/06/13/more-americ...
Cheers